Creating Brand Value and Marketing Taboo Topics at SXSW 2019

The Brands & Marketing Track focuses on how to generate brand loyalty by engaging customers in order to build and maintain successful brands. Hear from creative strategists and other industry voices as they discuss topics such as data-driven campaigns and leveraging neuroscience, storytelling, and tech trends.

“In a time when consumers struggle with the privacy paradox and brands struggle to stay relevant in an economy with ever-shortening attention spans – sessions in the 2019 Brands & Marketing Track will be seeking to find balance between digital distrust and dependence,” says SXSW Programmer Miranda Wylie. “Sessions will feature a range of perspectives on establishing voice, content creation, culture, data, health, inclusion, activism, and connection.”

Explore topics ranging from creating brand value and deepening emotional engagement, to marketing taboos and so much more in the Brands & Marketing Track from March 9-14 during the SXSW Conference. Priority access for this Track is given to Platinum and Interactive Badges; secondary access to all other badges.

Brands & Marketing Highlights

Follow the Feeling: Creating Brand Value

Speaker: Kai Wright (Columbia University)

Which metric is most important, are you even measuring the right one, and how do you use it to inform applying creativity strategically? Combining principles in communication, behavioral economics, and psychology, this session reveals research on how to build brand value by resonating with customers in a digital era. Learn how to follow the feeling to five key brand moments, and how to engineer that feeling into a cohesive brand experience across the organization.

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Whose Story Is It To Tell?

What do a dress made out of flip flops, an opera singer, and a portrait commissioned to the Smithsonian and National Museum of African American History and Culture all have in common? The ability to tell individual stories of diversity and inclusion in the experiential marketing landscape. Learn how to create an experiential campaign that not only deepens emotional engagement but also serves a purpose beyond the physical activation. Discover how to bring unique and engaging stories to life through a variety of creative mediums that help to serve the mission behind the story and the person behind the legacy.

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Latinx Digital Lives: Culture, Content & Community

Speaker: Stacie de Armas (Nielsen)

Technology has fundamentally changed the consumer experience, but disproportionately so for the Latinx community who make digital gains and advancements at a surprisingly higher rate than the total market. The combination of youth and demand for cultural connectivity through nuanced content has placed Latinos at the center of trendsetter culture, creating behavioral differences in how they communicate, inform, shop, consume content, and mobilize for social justice. We will dive deep into the use of these digital technologies among Latinx’s and the impact on cultural expression and behaviors – including music, television/video, lifestyles, and behaviors.

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Advertising Detox: How to Reduce Cognitive Load

Speakers: Neil Davidson (HeyHuman) and Aoife McGuinness (HeyHuman)

Is there an attentional cost of a Facebook notification? How does the presence of your smartphone reduce your available cognitive capacity? What is advertising and other content really doing to our brains and should we be worried? In a live on-stage experiment, HeyHuman will demonstrate the cognitive effects of different forms of advertising and content through brain-monitoring equipment, good and bad. We will share our neuroscience research insight and how it can change the relationships between brands and people – creating effective content that stimulates rather than drains our brains.

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Vaginal Health: How Do You Market Taboo Topics?

How do you talk about important health issues or facts of life if you can’t use their actual names? The women’s health industry has faced this dilemma for decades – life-changing products like tampons or vaginal dryness solutions can’t use words like “vagina” explicitly in ads or on vital consumer marketing platforms like Facebook. Imagine educating consumers about contact lenses or saline solution without being able to use the word “eye.” Seems crazy, right? In this cross-industry panel discussion, experts will discuss how to effectively market “taboo” topics such as vaginal health, how to create vocabulary for the complexity of female sexuality, and why it’s important for today’s leaders and biggest brands to destigmatize pressing health and aging concerns for women.